Dry season in the Venezuelan Llanos. We are about ten miles from the nearest paved road bouncing northwards between Cano Santo Domingo and the Rio Tinaco looking for a place where we can access the river. Despite the heat and the fact that we have been on the road since before dawn my companion on this trip, Norbert, and I speak excitedly about things to come. We never actually decided on a language and we move between Spanish, German, and English in our conversations. When you want to express a word that you do not know in the language being used, you just change to a language in which you know the word.

We try to drive up to a ranch that borders the river
and ask if we can trespass. Zebu cattle wander in front of us and refuse to
move. These cattle live with Jaguar, Anaconda, and Piranha. A beeping horn does
not even rate a bored nod from them. Eventually we make it to the cinderblock
ranch house where a few llanero men lay about, swinging in hammocks. A naked
three-year-old kid chases some sort of large strange looking bird with a stick
while several iguanas lounge in the shade. We are told that we need permission
from a boss who will be along shortly, "ya viene." Do not let the translation
fool you. "He is coming" just means that it will most likely be sometime today.

Amazingly the boss, accompanied by his shotgun-toting
bodyguard, arrives in about an hour. After some small talk, he decides that we
can use the river. He sends a ranch hand to guide us and we bounce
cross-country for about two miles with the ranch hand standing on the back
bumper. When we reach the river, the ranch hand jumps from the truck, points to
the river, and without another word walks off into the llanos in the direction
of the ranch.

I grab my four-foot seine and wade in waist deep. On the first pull
amongst some driftwood I bring up a one inch P. maccus and can hardly
believe my eyes. Over the next hour we collect about a dozen P. maccus
and let out shouts of joy every time we find yet another. Despite net after net
full of interesting loricariids, we were both the most excited over this pretty
little striped fish.

All of the captured P. maccus transported well
and six months later I still have every single one that we caught that day.
They readily adapted to the aquarium and were eating cucumber after two
days.

Although a number of small, striped Panaque are
sold in the aquarium trade, P. maccus seems to be one of the most
common. Most people know this fish as LDA 22, but the photo in Aqualog (pg
83) is not the best for identification since it depicts a very young specimen.
The color pattern in the photo changes once the fish reaches about two inches.
Even the pattern on the dorsal fin changes with age. Fry have three dark
bars while juveniles and adults have two. The fish pictured above match
very well with the holotype's color pattern, but there are also specimens
with a broken or wavy pattern. The fish pictured as L 162 (from Venezuela
not Brazil) looks like a very mature female P. maccus with a slightly
wavy pattern while L 104 appears to also be P. maccus with a very
wild stripe pattern. The wavy pattern form is found in the actual Orinoco
and its tributaries in Bolivar State, Venezuela, while the "normal" patterned
P. maccus comes from further north and west (Cojedes, Portuguesa,
Guarico, and Apure States) in the llanos where the drainages run into the
Rio Apure. I believe that the two forms represent geographical variation,
but further research could show them to be two distinct species.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the color
pattern changes with age. Young are a dark brown with five distinct white
stripes. Full-grown adults are a much lighter brown and possess from seven to
eight cream-colored stripes. L129, for example, is a Venezuelan fish but has a
black basic colouration with very light gray wavy stripes which, again, fade
and break up with maturity. There also appears to be a few Panaque
from other drainages that are either regional variations or distinct species.
Some authors even believe that the Peruvian L204 is P. maccus. If this
is true, P. maccus has a distribution that covers not only the Orinoco
system, but also the Amazon basin. It will certainly be some time before we
completely understand the inter-relations of the dwarf Panaque
species.

If you come across any form, buy them all and set them up
in their own special tank. Not only are they interesting to keep, but they
are not too difficult to spawn. Given the amazing color pattern of the juveniles,
P. maccus should be a big hit at the local fish club auction. If
you have spawned Ancistrus, Rineloricaria, and Farlowella
this fish (or another dwarf Panaque) should be your next challenge.
Oh yeah, Panaque is a Venezuelan for "pleco" and it is pronounced
"Pa-nah-KAY."

The above text and the data below was supplied by
Shane, I have very little
to add except that you might encounter this species as listed as Peckoltia
vittata in various older hobbyist books. More recent hobbyist books (such as
Bailey and Sandfords New Guide to Aquarium Fish) will list the species as P.
maccus. You can find pictures of the real P. vittatus in the Cat-eLog.

Copyright information for the images used in this article can be found on the species' full Cat-eLog page.

A detailed account can be found in the Catfish of the Month article (link below).
The species is sometimes confused with LDA068, which is very similar, but grows larger. The main key for distinguishing them is that juvenile LDA068 have stripes/squiggles/scribes on the head, which only appear in mature Panaque maccus. The mature size of LDA068 can be over 100mm, something not seen in P. maccus.

P. maccus is found in Andean whitewater rivers flowing through the Llanos into Rio Orinoco. Rio Apure drainages and reported from Rio Caroni.Orinoco (click on these areas to find other species found there)

The aquarium water should be clear in colour with neutral values. Measurements taken at the Rio Tinaco in the dry season were temperature 80°F, pH 7.5, and fairly hard at 3,000 mu. In the wet season the water is cooler, softer and has a neutral pH due to the heavy rains.

A wood-eating fish, the tank should be decorated with several different types of driftwood. These fish really like to have something to chew on and squash, cucumber, and other vegetables should be readily available to them (yams are a favourite). Supplement two to three times weekly with frozen foods.

The Biotope: P. maccus are only found amongst driftwood tangles close to the banks in the main river channels. Their striped brown and cream coloured body provides excellent camouflage in this environment. Place various types and lengths of driftwood at slanting angles from the back of the tank to the front. The back and sides of the tank should be covered with a dark background. Use sand or fine gravel that is a red-brown in colour for the substrate. Hide the spawning caves along the back of the tank behind the driftwood.

Other loricariids, small cichlids and tetras. In a small tank (15-20 gallons) add a school of small tetras. Silver hatchet tetras were common in the Rio Tinaco. A larger tank can house a community of wood eating loricariids. Other loricariids caught side by side with P. maccus included: Hypostomus plecostomus, Hypostomus emarginatus (L 153), Hypostomus plecostomoides (L166), L092, Hypoptopoma, Otocinclus, Lamontichthys llanero, and Glyptopterichthys (L154). A tank with this many wood-eating loricariids requires heavy filtration and frequent large water changes.

The fish should be maintained for two months under dry season conditions (see above) with thrice weekly feedings of frozen foods. In preparation for breeding, add a power head and air stone to the tank, unplug the heater, and begin making 20 percent daily water changes with cool rain or reverse osmosis water. The temperature should be allowed to fall to 70-72F. After four water changes, plug the heater back in and wait for the spawn. If, after one month, the fish have not spawned start the process over again. It may take a few cycles to get the fish spawning. Provide various sized spawning caves made from PVC or slate. The caves should be just large enough to allow the female (which is larger) to squeeze in and five to six inches in length.